- Yvan Colonna
Yvan Colonna is a Corsican nationalist convicted of assassinating the prefect of Corsica,
Claude Erignac on theFebruary 6 1998 . He is the son ofJean-Hugues Colonna , a former deputy of theFrench socialist party in theAlpes-Maritimes constituency and a recipient of the FrenchLégion d'honneur .Resumé
He was born in
Ajaccio in 1960. In 1975, his family moved toNice . After he completed his Baccalauréat (French high school), he studied to become a teacher of physical education and sports. He abandoned this in 1981, and returned to Corsica, and moved toCargèse where his brother later opened a beach bar. There, he took up goat hearding, commonplace in Corsica. He joined a nationalist militant faction close to theFLNC , and is thought to have been implicated in several terrorist acts in the region, but this has yet to be proved. For instance, he supposedly took part in an attack at the police station inPietrosella .Role in the assassination of Prefect Érignac
On the 6th of February 1998 at 9:05 pm, the prefect of Corsica, Claude Érignac exited a theatre onto rue Collona-d'Ornano in
Ajaccio . He was shot with three 9 mm bullets in the neck, and died shortly thereafter. The weapon was shown to be the same used to attack the police station in Pietrosella.An enquiry followed, which resulted in the arrest of several militants. Interrogation pointed towards Yvan Colonna as the culprit. Police went to question him, but he had already fled. This sparked the biggest manhunt in France, and Colonna was thought to have left the country, possibly for South America. However, an
infrared camera set in the mountains of Corsica, nearVico assurveillance of a "bergerie", a traditional corsican stone hut, yielded evidence that Colonna was hiding here. He was arrested on the 4 of June 2003.Charged with assassination and being a member of a terrorist organisation, he was put before the court of special cases in
Paris from 12 November 2007. The court was in session until 12 December 2007 [http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3224,36-938537@51-938538,0.html] . On 13 December 2007, Colonna was pronounced culprit and sentenced tolife imprisonment .During his long internment awaiting trial, he has repeatedly claimed innocence, and that he is the victim of unfair press coverage, convicting him before trial.
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